Laughing

I swear, the thing I like most about any day is laughing. Specifically those things that cause laughter again and again and again.

Cake Wrecks.

Look for it under blogs I read. I laugh out loud every single time I go there. It takes all of about thirty seconds to peruse the new day's offerings and get my laugh for the day. Then I get to show my son when he gets home from school, and I laugh all over again.

Some other things make me giggle occasionally, enough to check them out fairly routinely.

The Fail Blogs

There are about fifty of them, but they are various and sundry pictures, videos, and quotes of funny things. They are not consistently as laugh inducing as Cake Wrecks, but they are worth a few seconds of my time.

A few social media giants exist specifically to give me free and easy access to things that make me smile for sure, laugh sometimes. This too is worth a few seconds of my day.

Twitter

I follow a few people I don't know simply because I found them somehow and they made me laugh. My Twitter name (or whatever it is called) is (hold on, I have to look it up): JoTaylor776.

If you want to see who I follow, feel free to look, but I don't necessarily want to post them all here.

I think I need to laugh every day. When I was little, I wanted to be a comedian. Yeah, like a standup comedian. I told my Dad this one day and he said, "But honey, you aren't very funny."

That burst my bubble in a big way but luckily I went on to be a successful, well-adjusted grown-up despite Dad's horrific handling of my secret desire.

He's funnier than I am.

I'm usually one of those people who is only funny when I'm not trying to be. Yes, one of THOSE people. So, I revere those who can make me spit coffee out onto my monitor screen in a single sentence.

To the people in this world who see it as a funny place to be, I salute you.

Peace,

Jo Taylor

Wandering Back

I've wandered away lately from the whole reason I started this blog. Today, I shall wander back. I called it Characteristically Speaking for a number of reasons. One reason is that I write character based stories. I think of the character first, then I tell about who they are and what made them that way (also known as a plot), and in the process love them and hug them and squeeze them and call them George (an obscure Bugs Bunny reference, sorry). This makes me happy.

I also like to learn about what makes a character come alive on the page. The device and voice and technique that creates this alchemy. I tend to talk a lot, so those who know me personally would say that this blog is characteristic of me speaking, and speaking, and speaking.

So far in this post, I've used a particular device three times. Can anyone tell me what it is? Not humor, that isn't exactly a technical device. Okay, give up? It's called polysyndeton. It means using a succession of conjunctions when they could be deleted and commas used, but the effect is different, not the meaning. So all those "ands" were on purpose. Now usually, I would use it once in a story, let's not go overboard. Some people despise it, and some, like me, like the effect in certain stories. I think it mimics real speech, as bad as that can be when it is supposed to be dialog. I use it as one of the ways to show a character thinking and speaking at the same time, or even speaking before thinking.

The thing that started this whole agenda for me today was a recent critique from one of the sites I participate in online. The critique writer said I needed to learn how to use commas correctly and not rely on conjunctions; this in reference to a passage much like the above. Well, yes and no. I am doing it on purpose. I want the effect. It reads differently and has the effect of slowing, of emphasizing, what is being put together in succession with the conjunction instead of the comma.

While I treasure the feedback I get from others that helps my writing, I am discovering that I am starting to nod politely, and then do it my way anyhow. Again, those who know me personally will not be surprised by this behavior. I always do it (ignore advice) when I know a certain amount about the subject matter. It tells me that I have a higher level of confidence in my writing than before. Before: when I would change anything because I assumed I was wrong and they were right. Now, I am not so quick to change. And that, dear readers, is so characteristic of me.

Peace,

Jo Taylor

I'm Not Running Out of Things To Say

My family would say to the above title: "Duh!"

They think it is a physical improbability that I will ever run out of things to say, but they are happy that I am now WRITING said things and not TALKING all the time. Not that I ever did that.

But, what I really mean by the title is that I am indeed surprised that this is my twenty-first blog post, and I am not running out of things to talk about. In fact, I've started keeping a list of things to post in the future. This is coming in handy as the current English class I am taking requires us to (can you guess?): BLOG!

How easy! I can now say this because I am a blogger. It is a bit embarrassing, but I am virtually spewing all kinds of thoughts in that blog because it's mostly about writing, and hey, that's what I do. I haven't gotten any feedback from my classmates yet, so it's kind of like this blog that no one reads either. Happy as a clam. I reserve the right to cry buckets on here if someone there does not get my humor or my teacher thinks my posts are insipid (we are supposed to be thougthtful and appropriately school-like).

I don't know if blogging can be counted in daily word counts for writers (I try to write 1500 words per day), but if it does, my productivity has seriously gone up!

I've noticed lots of capital letters and exclamation points in this particular posting, but it makes me happy so I am leaving it. That's the coolest thing about having a blog. You make the rules. Here are the first few official rules, only put down in case I need to refer to them later.

1. Blog when you have something to say, or not.

2. Try to blog in character at least half the time. (This one is turning out to be hard, she whined.)

3. Do not try to be funny. If you try, you will sound like a toad.

4. Post how you speak, sometimes it's funny.

5. Five rules are enough.

Peace,

Margaret's Mom